In the digital age, organizations increasingly depend on computing resources to manage data and to provide internal and external services. In order to manage increasingly complex information technology infrastructures, some organizations may use virtual data centers. By virtualizing computing resources (e.g., processing, storage, and/or network resources), a virtual data center may enable an administrator to focus on computing tasks to be performed (i.e., “workloads”), and the computing resources required to execute these tasks, instead of the particular configuration of the underlying physical devices.
Additionally, organizations may wish to protect data (e.g., by scanning, encrypting, securely storing, backing up, enforcing access to, monitoring access to, and/or isolating data) in order to ensure compliance with internal or external data-protection requirements, such as governmental laws and regulations, partnership agreements with other organizations, etc. Unfortunately, enforcing such security policies may consume significant computing, storage, and networking resources, thereby potentially impacting the performance of primary applications in the virtual data center. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for optimizing security controls for virtual data centers.